How to format your references using the Government and Opposition citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Government and Opposition. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Forde A (2006) Careers in Systems Biology. A Meeting of Minds, Expertise, and Imagination. Science (New York, N.Y.) 311(5765), 1306–1307.

A journal article with 2 authors

Becker H and Walker RJ (2003) Efficient Mixing of the Solar Nebula from Uniform Mo Isotopic Composition of Meteorites. Nature 425(6954), 152–155.

A journal article with 3 authors

Messenger S, Keller LP and Lauretta DS (2005) Supernova Olivine from Cometary Dust. Science (New York, N.Y.) 309(5735), 737–741.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Chen XH et al. (2008) Superconductivity at 43 K in SmFeAsO1-xFx. Nature 453(7196), 761–762.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Trigeassou J-C (2011) Electrical Machines Diagnosis. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Namjoshi K, Zeller A and Ziv A (eds.) (2011) Hardware and Software: Verification and Testing: 5th International Haifa Verification Conference, HVC 2009, Haifa, Israel, October 19-22, 2009, Revised Selected Papers. (Vol. 6405). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Hirz M et al. (2013) Knowledge-Based Design. In W Dietrich, A Gfrerrer and J Lang (eds.), Integrated Computer-Aided Design in Automotive Development: Development Processes, Geometric Fundamentals, Methods of CAD, Knowledge-Based Engineering Data Management. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 309–330.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Government and Opposition.

Blog post

Davis J (2015, November 16) Scientists Think They’ve Discovered A New Domain Of Life In The Human Gut. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-discover-potential-new-domain-life-human-microbiome-0/ (accessed 30 October 2018).

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office (1995) Inspectors General: Alleged Misconduct by NASA Inspector General. No. OSI-95-9. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. 10 February.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Allen RT (2014) Exploring the Lived Experiences of Program Managers Regarding an Automated Logistics Environment. Doctoral dissertation. Northcentral University, Scottsdale, AZ.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Kishkovsky S (2011, December 30) Disputed Voting Turns Church, A Kremlin Ally, Into Its Critic. New York Times, p. A4.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Forde 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Becker and Walker 2003; Forde 2006).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Becker and Walker 2003)
Three or more authors: (Chen et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Government and Opposition
ISSN (print)	0017-257X
ISSN (online)	1477-7053
Scope